Threats posed by an active shooter, a term defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an individual with a firearm who attempts to kill or wound as many random people as possible in a public space, are front page news as of late, with threats ever increasing. The victim count of an active shooter event is often times only limited by the shooters ammunition capacity or the arrival of law enforcement.
According to GunViolenceArchive.org, the US experienced more than 53,000 gun-related incidences in 2015, resulting in 13,426 deaths. In a recent report released by the Department of Justice, 160 mass shootings occurred between 2000 and 2013. Most recently, the mass shootings in Orlando, Fla. on Jun. 12, 2016, where 49 people were killed and 53 were injured further demonstrates the urgent need for a technology based sentinel and suppression approach.
Americans recognize their continued vulnerability at schools, in office buildings, places-of-worship, government buildings, and other public spaces as seen in the spike in sales of personal weapons that invariably follow each of the many gruesome mass shootings. The social impact of remedial or preventative efforts in this area will be immense, with the number of deaths resulting from active shooter scenarios reduced, and citizen peace of mind in living their day-to-day lives greater.
While personal protection and preventative approaches are well known, each has limitations but are nonetheless part-and-parcel of the commercial landscape. Arms manufacturers and/or dealers offer weapons for personal protection, however, even in light of numerous conceal and carry laws, intervention by trained, armed citizens is serendipity, hardly an option for development. Moreover, automatic locking doors, surveillance cameras, and alarm systems, as well as active means, such as armed security personnel, have been available and are well known. Be that as it may, and as recent history has shown, such approaches are not without their limitations and shortcomings.
In the context of heretofore known “systems,” there are numerous teachings directed to threat detection and threat suppression. While inroads have been and continue to be made, it is to such limited systems and their shortcomings that present efforts are directed.
As to threat detection, there are products on the market that offer only gunshot notification and generalized localization: ShotSpotter Technology is an outdoor urban acoustic listening system that affixes to utility poles and can triangulate the source of a gunshot so that police can respond accordingly. Its localization capability is two-dimensional (x, y coordinates, such as an intersection of two streets) and not better than ten square meters. Another company operating in this space is Shooter Detection Systems, Inc., which sells acoustic and infrared sensors used in indoor spaces that are capable of identifying a gunshot and notifying the police via secure communications link as well as the occupants of the building via SMS text of the gunshot event. However, this system offers only one degree of localization (i.e., the room where the gun was fired). Finally, a variety of shooter detection teachings are known, and well suited for adaptation in furtherance of a robust detection, targeting, tracking and suppression solution, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,965,868 (Roberts et al.), US Pub. No. 2014/0269199 (Weldon et al.), US Pub. No. 2015/0070166 (Boyden et al), and WO 2015/184219 (Khire et al.), each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties.
As to threat suppression, a variety of non-lethal tools exist for disrupting an individual, though each of them have inherent shortfalls that render such alternatives less effective in the context of an active shooter event. For example, a stun gun and a beanbag gun are non-lethal but both could cause serious injury or death, and are not suitable for sustained suppression. Tear gas and pepper spray can be rendered ineffective with a gas mask, and are ill advised for indoor use. Furthermore, tear gas and pepper spray do not differentiate between civilians, police, and the intended target. Moreover, concentrated and directional microwaves, so called Directed Energy Guns, are very costly and are not always non-lethal; concentrated and directional sound waves, known as sonic or ultrasonic weapons are generally unproven and while suitable for crowd dispersion, they cannot cause physical disruption because they create effects that are more of a nuisance rather than a substantive challenge that must be overcome.
As to multifunctional approaches (i.e., those characterized by threat detection and suppression), efforts to date generally rely upon disruption means. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,990,805 (Kumhyr et al.) combines detection with non-lethal chemical countermeasures, with US Pub. No. 2015/0061869 (Crowe et al.) combining detection with dispensing of a non-lethal water borne irritant. It does not appear that neither of these systems can detect a threat, identify/target the threat, track the movement of the threat, and effectively and immediately physically disrupt and suppress the threat via multiple directed and controlled suppression means.
In as much as shelter in place had been a best practice, confrontation in hopes of lessening causalities has become a prevalent theme in keeping with present discourse on the topic. With even the best response times, and the presence of armed authorities on site, there remains a need for an immediate, significant, discriminating and systematic suppression, cessation and/or counter attack measures.